It looks neat and all but I am seriously shocked you payed this much for such a unit. Its just going to sit there on a shelf now and gather dust after this video
You mean 3.11 WFW? Ahh, the memories of fussing about with my home token ring network topology... that would actually be fun to do again, even though it's sometimes frustrating. I even still have the ISA network cards, cables, terminators and splitters... Oh and some ISA raid cards and drives I could use (internal HDDs and an external tape drive plus a few still sealed long-storage tapes, and I've always kept it all cool and dry and dark). Heh. Would be cool to do again just for fun. Sadly, 3.1 was the cutoff for the older/legacy 8088 chips. 😢
3.0 is the last version that runs on an XT-class system. But lacking any kind of integrated pointer or a PS/2 port Windows is gonna be pretty tedious, unless the USB port can use a mouse and I missed that or haven't gotten to that part of the video yet. I also really wish the screen were 4:3 instead of 19:9.
@@jameschamplin1742 You could use a serial mouse with it. I do remember using one. It was horrible (refused to track smoothly and always jumped, left trails as you moved it too fast for the screen refresh, etc lol) but it did work. Slowly. You couldn't "snap" across screen like we're so used to now.
Brings back lots of memories. My first PC was the PMC-80, a knock off of Radio Shacks TRS-80. My second PC was the Kaypro 4. I upgraded it and added a 20mg hard drive. Friends frequently remind me of a statement I made once, that 20 mg's was all anyone could ever need or use. Nowadays I have systems and external drives measured in Terrabytes. Times have changed.
Personally, I think an ATX-size XT mainboard with ISA, integrated drive controllers, and a full 1MB of RAM would be the ultimate thing. Sure it's not portable but everything could be integrated, and there'd be room for all possible ports. This is a great effort. If it had any legacy ports at all, that would be a great plus, and having a screen that's 4:3 rather than 16:9 would be ideal, but it'd likely jack the BOM up since 16:9 is all anybody wants to make in quantity. With custom-order screens, this thing would be over $300
My first owned computer is powered by 8088! At that time, mouse is not popular at all. However, a joystick is much more easier to be bought from the computer stores instead. So I would like the vendor to add a 15-pin game port connector, a 25-pin RS-232C connector or even a 25-pin printer port connector which will make this PC more useful. Therefore it could be used to connect those legacy peripherals.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought this. $230 toy. If it had a Raspberry Pi or some kind of Android based Arm chip inside of it it would be lot more interesting. This thing is basically an overpriced paperweight.
My first computer I ever owned was with this particular processor, Seeing CGA games brings a lot of child hood memories, Looks like I'll get of these Laptops.
Hah, same! Although I started with a monochrome amber monitor. Bought that after a (very expensive) 100MB external scsi hard drive that sounded like a whole rack mount server power up while spinning up, followed by a constant whirring sound, haha. Oh, and reading /writing sounded like someone rage smashing on a mechanical keyboard. It was crazy. (Technically it was the second home computer I used, but the previous one was strictly my father's. It took me a year or two to save up for one as they were EXPENSIVE AF back then. Like 8-10k equivalent (inflation lol) for a basic PC around the level you'd expect to pay 200 for today. A basic, cheap, consumer model.
@@ahmseb Haha, nice! Yeah, I liked the look of the green ones more, but amber was a lot softer on your eyes, so my father insisted on it, and I just got the old one of his to use while I saved up for the color one, which ended up being EGA for me simply because it took a little while to save up. (A couple of months IIRC)
@@ahmseb Couldn't pick a better time period to be "here" for it all, right? Watching the Internet be born and evolve, becoming more and more a part of our lives... What a great time! I can't wait to see what's next!
Cool idea, but I don't see why I'd want to pay so much for an MS-DOS laptop when I already run DOS on my iPad, smartphone, Steam Deck, laptop, PC, and every other device I have. The old school design alone isn't enough imo. But that handheld one you showed near the end looks kinda cool, so yeah - review that one. Pocketable DOS with a physical keyboard - that has slightly more novelty to it.
Some people prefer to run on original hardware. That being said, even as a retro PC enthusiast, I'm still disappointed in my purchase. This is a cool way to repurpose old industrial SBCs, but that's about it. I'd rather just carry my ThinkPad 600E..
@@lurch789 This isn’t an authentic experience though. No 5.25” floppies, tape drives, and no period correct LCD or CRT. I have lots of original hardware, but I don’t find emulating a NES or Dreamcast to be egregious at all. In fact, in most ways it’s a better experience.
Bizarre! I spent a lot of time fiddling with DOS to get games working 30-odd years ago. I can't think of one reason why Id need to repeat that experience. Windows 3.0 as well? Was this product's sole use case to make me feel old?
I share in those memories, and also have zero interest in something like this, regardless of price. Why not go further back and make a PDP-8 compatible...no thanks. I can understand the interest in muscle cars of the 60's and early 70's, as they still look cool and perform well vs many modern cars (ignoring the gas mileage and poor emissions), but computers from the 80's or earlier just have no practical use other than as an interesting museum piece. A very cheap ARM based SBC or even most any smartphone can run circles around anything from that era.
I bought a 233 mhz pentium mmx IBM 380XD Laptop for under 10 $ under 8€ installed Windows ME and it runs flawlelsly with even 32 mb of ram it has PS2 conector even usb and can use wired and wireless keyboard and mouse. All in all totaly happy with it
I don't find it to be very good. It gets very hot, the screen is terrible, it can BARELY run Windows. It's a cool way to repurpose old industrial SBCs. That's about it.
Saw this weeks ago on other channels already and it is really awesome other than the price. I wonder how they integrated USB into the system but as long as it works, it works!
Looks like a CH375. It's a fairly minimal microcontroller/usb interface. Whilst it's only being used for storage in the supplied software it is actually capable of running a full USB stack given enough software.
I do really like this idea but I think it has to be just a little more usable, the PS/2 port being the big thing. I'd love to see how it handles more things still and might even still be worth it.
my first pc was with wins 3.1. i got to learn to use the computer at work. finally, decided to get one myself. it cost $3k back then. i later upgraded to wins 95 and so on. those were the days!
Does this DOS come with the DOSSHELL installed? That'd be a less memory-intensive way to get a "graphic" approach to the computer. Plus, IIRC, it had a form of task switching, which gave the impression of multitasking.
DOSSHELL never worked great. Better get DR DOS 7 and use TASKMGR. It's much better and more stable when doing multitasking. If you still want use MS-DOS and multitasking, then get a 386 CPU or better and run Windows 3.1 in enhanced mode.
Mouse support, a better screen and compatibility with more powerful SBC’s like a CM4 would make this device fantastic. I love the design, but right now it offers too little for too much.
Would have been pretty damn easy to integrate a serial port, which would have allowed usage of a serial mouse and I think there are Serial to PS/2 adaptors out there now.
What can it be used for - other than a collectors toy ? I seem to remember the very first DOS pc's had a manual (potentiometer) sound level control. The first CD drives had this too.
My first pc was a 486 with VGA. I wouldnt have bought a 8088 or 80286 as my Atari ST was so much superior... So, yeah, this machine does not bring up nice mémoires for me... Thank you for the review
Great I had an 8088 with 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 disk drives, 640k mem no HD, CGA monitor. in 1990, for the low price of 1000.00 bucks. The first HD was 32 MB for 250.00. I just purchased 2 M.2 drives for a new build for 45 bucks each 1TB Saturday.
I wish they had this as a desktop box with the expansion bus built in and no keyboard and monitor. The monitor is really hit or miss. Some reviewers have ones that you can barely see anything. The keyboard isn't great either.
They should come up with a mini laptop with AMD 7940HS, 32GB RAM, a SSD, 8" screen, HDMI etc and I'm good. Now, I'll be travelling light!. . . . Edit: and under 1kg. . . . Maybe I'll wait for RDNA 4 APU... . . And to think that just a few months ago, I was ready to punt on the 5700G in a 10L case!
I am glad we outgrown these laptops and have better ones now. But I would love to play Dsy of the tentacle, monkey island and others from "back in the day"
It would be nice if you disclosed how you got these devices up front for ethical reasons -- were they sent to you, are you collaborating/promotion, is the content being reviewed by them in any way before it's released, etc.
He said Aliexpress sent this over. I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say 95% of items on this channel were supplied to him. It’s be such a rarity for him to buy something, we’d know about it straight from the start. 😂
Still have my 386sx which I didn't have the heart to throw away. I was thinking to myself. What kinda of an idiot would want to buy one of these nowadays?!?!
The Ali Express advertisement is getting a bit much on this channel.The channel was a lot more fun without this monetization. Its a funny little device though.
This is insane. I would never get one, but it’s interesting to see it. Is it a recurring meme with the repeating sentences? It’s definitely not the first time I see and I thought it was an edit error before 😂
This seems like a great machine, but the truth is, you really don't get much done with an 8088 at that clock speed. People forgot how slow that is, aha. For any retro gaming, you want to start at least a 386 SX 25 Mhz or better, aim for something like a 486 DX/2 66 Mhz. Pentium 100 MMX if you plan on playing Win98 games.
I know its overpriced a bit but it scares me how many people in the comments are like: "its garbage because it cant run any modern program" while they dont get the point of it....
That type of machine the volume is controlled though the sound driver you can also manually set it in the configuration file I don't remember the file names to check off the top of my head. I like the idea of that system in that form factor it's just to expensive for what what use I'd get out of it but could be a great deal for people who is into that specific Era of computing.
It's a cool idea, but not at that price. I love the idea, and I know some people that would love to have one because they still run DOS programs for programming chips and the like.
How did the manage to get 8088 processors? Does Intel still manufacture these old things, or did they dumpster dive and pull them from old IBM XT machines?
Kind of expensive for just a gimmick. I'm an old tech and was not a fan of the "old days". It would be like going from a 4k display to a monochrome monitor. Interesting for about a second and that's about it.
If only it had two serial ports and a parallel port, they'd sell a ton of them to people who want to use older peripherals. The software to program older Motorola radios simply won't work on newer computers.
