Vintage PCs: restoring them, coding for them, building new hardware for old buses
Started by CassetteFuture ·
· 4 replies · last changed
CassetteFuture ·
The everything-thread for old computers — restoration, programming, and (my favourite corner) designing new hardware for machines from the 80s and 90s.
Current bench: a 486DX2-66 that arrived "untested" (translation: dead), now recapped and running, and an XT-class board I'm designing a prototyping card for. There is nothing like poking an ISA bus with logic you soldered yourself — 8 MHz is slow enough to actually see on a cheap scope, which makes it the friendliest hardware-hacking platform ever accidentally created.
Software side, I've been writing a small text editor in 8086 assembly that fits in under 4 KB. Modern programming tells you not to care about bytes. Old machines make you care, and it turns out caring is the fun part.
Show me your machines, your homebrew cards, your cursed BIOS stories. No machine too humble — a working 386SX with a story beats a shrink-wrapped collector piece.
Marbles88 ·
I have never touched a machine older than me but reading "slow enough to see on a scope" just rewired something in my head. where does one even start with this hobby without a garage full of gear?
CassetteFuture ·
Honest answer: an emulator and a book. DOSBox or 86Box, a copy of a period assembly book (they're all scanned), and write something tiny. The hardware itch comes later and eBay is full of "untested" bargains once it does. Untested means broken. Broken means cheap. Cheap means yours.
If you want the hardware feel without vintage prices: any Z80 single-board kit gets you soldering + assembly programming for about the cost of a takeaway.
PixelMoth ·
my contribution: I own a beige mechanical keyboard from 1989 that weighs more than my laptop and I will be buried with it. also the aesthetic corner of this hobby is valid — amber phosphor is simply the correct colour for text
TrackGauge ·
Confession from the trains thread: British Rail ran its freight yards on computers like these well into the 2000s. I have a soft spot for a TOPS terminal. The overlap in this Venn diagram was inevitable.